Bio: Jeanna Mead is a visual artist working in sculpture, installation, performance, and video. As an educator, Jeanna has taught Three-Dimensional Design, Beginning Sculpture, Advanced Sculpture, and Topics in Sculpture at the University at Albany. She has earned the MFA Departmental Commendation Award, the Roanne Kulakoff Award in recognition of her artwork, and the Steve Street Award for her artistic commitment to social justice issues. She currently resides in upstate New York, where the artistic debris of her practice tends to spill into her
kitchen, much to the chagrin of her husband, two sons, four cats, and dog.

Artist Statement: I am trying to free myself from a blind faith in a firm “phallacy”; my work is a way of laughing through the struggle. Reflecting on the fact that I began to equate a certain macho appendage with power long before my first menses, I aim to harness that youthful energy–confused and rebellious and absurd as it was–and inject it into each piece. Sculptural video installations act as satirical self portraits
set in a world that is a distorted reflection of my own. Looping videos without resolution invite the viewer to witness my purgatory: an endless parade of rage and shame and complicity, marching along in a pair of “Penis Pumps.” My work is personal, political, silly, sexual, comfortably uncomfortable, and it is about what drives me as much as it is about what holds me back.

Website: www.jeannamead.com

Social Media: @Jeanna_Makes_Stuff